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SOCIETY OF ARTS, 



OF THE 



MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. 



288th Meeting: Oct. 12, 1882. 



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IN MEMORY OF 



WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS, LLD. 



Late Presidknt of the Society. 



BOSTON: 1882. 





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SOCIETY OF ARTS, 



MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. 



288th Meeting : Oct. 12, 1882. 



IX ME.MORY OF 



WILLIAM BARTON liOGEKS, LLD. 



Late President of the Society. 






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BOSTON: 1882. 



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MEMORIAL MEETING, 



It was deemed fittinor that at its first meetinoj of the season the 
Society of Arts should formallj^ recognize the loss of its honored 
and beloved founder 

William Barton Rogers, LL.D., 

who died suddenly in Huntington Hall, on May 30th, 1882, while 
making an address at the graduating exercises of the class of 1882 
of the Institute of Technology. 

The meeting of October 12th was therefore held as a memorial 
meeting, that expression might be given to the love and admiration 
which, by his noble character and rare powers of mind. Professor 
Rogers won from all about him. The meeting was called to order 
by President Francis A. Walker. 

President Walker said: Ladies and Gentlemen, — We have 
tonight assembled together to commemorate the life and scientific 
work of Professor William B. Rogers, who a little less than a year 
ago in this hall relinquished the position of president of the Society of 
Arts, which he had so long held. The relation of the Society to its 
retiring president was a peculiar one, so peculiar as to be almost 
unique. It was not that he was the Society's first president, that he 
was its founder, that to his conception the Society owed its existence ; 
there was more than this in the parting between Professor Rogers and 
the Society of Arts. From the first he had been in a high sense its life 
and soul. Mind and heart he had been wholly devoted to its interests. 
He had watched over its growth, had labored for its advancement in 
scope and influence, and had devoted to it all the energies of one of 



the rarest and richest minds which this country or the larger and 
older world of science has ever known. Nobly endowed with various 
gifts, he had at once the power of rigid investigation, of luminous expo- 
sition, and of philosophic eloquence, each in a degree uncommon 
among men of science, and perhaps never before so happily com- 
bined in any one person. He was, indeed, a man who could enter no 
community without attracting instant attention and commanding 
universal admiration, — a man who could fall out of no community 
without creatincr a wide and lastino^ void. 

But perhaps it was in a society like this that the purity of his 
nature, the extent and variety of his acquirements and accomplish- 
ments, and the richness of his intellectual gifts were to be most fully 
known and felt. It was not my privilege to attend the meetings 
of this association while Professor Rogers presided over them, but in 
the meetings of another body, the National Academy of Sciences, I 
have had reason to know how truly admirable he was as the presidmg 
officer of a learned society ; how suggestive and inspiring were his 
brief introductions of scientific themes ; how apt and conclusive and 
satisfactory his summing-up of the facts and arguments adduced. 
Certainly, if any man. Professor Rogers knew how to give an intro- 
duction that introduced. He did not, like many presiding officers, 
proud of their knowledge and fond of display, anticipate the subjects 
to be presented in such a manner that perhaps diffident and embarrassed 
speakers felt that the interest of their audience had been exhausted 
in advance ; such egotism was wholly foreign to the generous soul of 
him we mourn. In altogether another spirit, when Professor Rogers 
introduced a speaker, he wooed for him in advance the attention of 
the audience, aroused their interest in the subject, and prepared the 
way for its presentation. And when the paper was read and the 
discussion closed, shall we ever forget what a glow, as of poesy and 
romance, his fervid eloquence — eloquence such as no man since Chal- 
mers has possessed — threw over and around even the most dull and 
difficult among the subjects of scientific inv^estigation I For to Pro- 
fessor Rogers the truth was always beautiful, and the most solid and 
substantial structure of scientific principle stood in his view against an 
evening sky radiant with a light which no brush of painter could por- 
tray. 

It is appropriate that this, the first meeting of the Society since 



the death of Professor Rogers, should be devoted to a commemora- 
tion of his life and his scientific work. On behalf of the executive 
committee of the Society, Prof. William P. Atkinson will offer resolu- 
tions in reference to this event. 

Professor Atkinson then read the following resolutions : — 

Resolved : That, by the death of Professor Rogers, the country 
lost a man whose rare abilities, and whose single-hearted devotion, 
through a long life, to the pursuit of scientific truth, place his name 
on that short list of American men of science who have distinctly 
raised the credit of the American nation in the eyes of the scientific 
world. 

Resolved: That to him, more than any other man the founder 
and organizer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the 
State and the City owe a deep debt of gratitude for the accomplish- 
ment of a most difficult task, the successful establishment of a new 
institution of learning to meet a new and pressing educational want 
in the community ; and that we who have been associated with him, 
or who, as members of this Society, have had the opportunity of 
knowing the difficulties with which the enterprise was surrounded, 
desire to put on record our appreciation of his patience, his courage, 
his sagacity, his comprehensive and far-reaching views of the true 
aim and purpose of the institution, of the earnestness and self- 
sacrifice with which he devoted himself to the work, and the gener- 
osity with which he gave his time, his means, his thought, and finally 
his life to its successful accomplishment. 

Resolved: That, through his long career as a teacher, President 
Rogers, by his varied gifts, his accurate and extensive knowledge, 
and his admirably trained power of scientific exposition, exhibited in 
the highest degree those qualities which give success and add lustre 
to a profession in which, of all others, this country needs, if it is to 
reach its true rank in the intellectual world, such gifts and such 
devotion as he exhibited. 

Resolved: That in his death this Society has lost not only a 
respected presiding officer but a man who, through the simplicity as 
well as the dignity of his character, through his constant courtesy 
and his unaffected kindness of heart, endeared himself to all of us 
who had the happiness of his acquaintance as an honored and beloved 
personal friend. 



Mr. President, I do not intend to support these resolutions with 
any extended remarks, for there are others here who are much better 
able to do so than I am. Although by the death of Professor Rogers 
I am left the senior instructor in our institution, and, with one excep- 
tion, the one who has been longest connected with it, yet Professor 
Runkle has been connected with it from the very beginning, and can 
speak with more intimate knowledge of all Professor Rogers's plans 
and purposes than I can. I shall leave it to Professor Cross to speak 
of him as a teacher of science, and to the President of our Alumni to 
speak of his relations with our students. And we have with us this 
evening — and I am sure we are all happy to have him with us 
- — a gentleman from Professor Rogers's native State, who was con- 
nected with him in scientific work, and who can tell us much 
of the debt Virginia and the whole country owe to his early and 
untiring scientific labors. 

When I think of Professor Rogers, I can think of him only or 
chiefly as a personal friend. In the beginning, at the outset of our 
enterprise, I came in as a perfect stranger to him. My position, like 
that of all of us here, was full of difficulties in organizing such an 
entirely new institution, on entirely new plans, and I can speak, if 
anybody can, of Professor Rogers's uniform kindness and uniform 
courtesy. 

He saw, and appreciated, and sympathized with us in all the 
difficulties under which we labored ; and I believe if we had not had 
a man as wise, as kind, as faithful, as far-seeing as Professor Rogers 
was that this institution would never have reached the point of suc- 
cess in which we rejoice today. He, of all men, was fitted by his 
mental and moral qualities to undertake the pilotage of a new insti- 
tution like this in the stormy waters which it must perforce pass over 
before it reaches success. I have known Professor Rogers inti- 
mately in personal acquaintance, for he made me his personal friend ; 
I have visited him in his beautiful and happy home ; and I can testify 
to every word that anyone can utter as to his warm-heartedness, and 
his excellence. In his character he was a man to be loved ; in his 
studies and in his teaching he was a man to be imitated. He could 
not be satisfied until he had found the truth, and uttered it. He not 
only had that enthusiasm for science which made him a discoverer, 
he had tliat love of imparting it which made him a teacher. Add to 



this that he was always in sympathy with the young. His warm- 
heartedness went out to his pupils ; and when we combine these quali- 
ties, that admirable gift for scientific investigation which he had by 
nature, and that untiring pursuit of and love for truth, with his 
wonderful capacity as an expositor, and with his warm personal sym- 
pathies, it seems to me we have almost the ideal of a scientific teacher, 
and the elements of an eminently happy and successful life. 

Mr. President, without further remarks 1 offer to you these 
resolutions. 

Mr. James P. Tolman, president of the Alumni Association of 
the Institute, then said : Mr. President, — In seconding the resolutions 
which have just been presented, I esteem it a privilege to be per- 
mitted to refer to the relations which the students in the school of 
this Institute have entertained toward our dear friend. A feeling of 
warm personal loyalty was inspired in the minds of all who received 
direct instruction from him. I am a member of the earliest class 
that identifies itself by the legend, "Graduate of the School of the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology." In those early days when 
we occupied narrow quarters in Summer street the numbers of 
instructors and of students were both small enough to permit an 
intercourse impossible in the later days of large classes and many 
teachers. If we did not then have the advantages that now accrue 
from special libraries and finished apparatus ; if the courses of 
instruction were incomplete and uncertain, the students being the 
subjects for experiment, as well as objects for teaching ; if we were 
so unequal in preparation for our work that the time of many must 
often be sacrificed to the needs of the few ; still I question if our 
intimate relations with the professors, and the spirit which grew from 
direct association with them, did not largely compensate for the 
shortcomings of our course. 

Professor Rogers was always the student's friend. The lack of 
means and the immense amount of work assumed by the instructors 
sometimes caused implied promises to go unfulfilled, and inspired the 
restless pupils — a good proportion of whom were grown men, taking 
time for study from the practice of their professions — to feel rebel- 
lious against the direction of the school. I remember that some of 
these occasions resulted in visits to President Rogers, and that such 
was the invariable courtesy with which these complainants were 



8 



treated, that we always came away feeling that, in so far as the means 
would allow, every need of the classes should be filled, and with our 
sense of manliness so appealed to that we were ready to recognize our 
duty as co-workers with the professors for the good of the School. For 
fifteen years I have carried the impression — now only an impression, 
with the details forgotten — left by one of these meetings, in which 
the sweetness and sympathy of the professor entirely changed the 
attitude of the rebellious company, and sent us away allies instead of 
opponents. 

I also love to recall his aid given in the selection of a subject 
for the graduating thesis. This included, in my case, references to 
the writings of himself and others, the selection and discussion of 
geological specimens, and, finally, practical hints for the camping 
trip incident to gathering my information ; so that I became 
thoroughly grounded in the feeling that 1 was actually conducting an 
original investigation, to be of real scientific value, and not merely 
performhig the perfunctory task of complying with the formalities of 
the regulations. 

In one of my school vacations I was fortunate enough to cross 
the ocean in the same steamer with President Rosters. And asjain I 
had warm testimony of his interest in the progress of the students. 
He frequently called my attention to passing objects of moment, 
and drew my notice to such subjects as the temperature of the water, 
the navigation of the ship, the geology of the Irish coast ; and I find 
in my old letters a reference to his delight in a glorious sunset, and 
his discoursing on the beautiful play of clouds around a full moon. 
The loveliness of his spirit, expressed through the wonderful charm 
of his manner, makes of these recollections, which read like mere 
commonplace civilities, a storehouse of affectionate regard, and 
endears him to me much beyond any warrant of his official relations. 

As an instructor Professor Rogers always came to his classes 
with his lectures thoroughly prepared. I cannot recall any instance 
of his appearing without his plan for the session being entirely 
matured, or any suggestion of his having felt his way in the arrange- 
ment of his course. He generally had the blackboards filled with 
copious notes, written by himself, thus greatly taxing his physical 
strength. His absorption in his subject made him almost impatient 
of the restraint imposed by models and apparatus, and at times 



interfered with the smoothness of the experiments which he had 
always carefully prepared, and which were so lucidly explained that 
ocular demonstration seemed superfluous. He almost always intro- 
duced illustrations referrinsf to other branches of science than that in 
particular discussion ; and thus greatly contributed not only to the 
profound respect entertained toward his own accomplishments, but 
also to the stock of ofeneral information of the student, which is so 
much to be desired in a technical education. 

This fact, that he always visibly led his pupils, and never 
seemed in any mxanner to lean upon them, aided largely in the 
development of that discipleship of feeling which was so character- 
istic of the relation of his classes toward him. 

But it was not alone the earlier students who loved him. My 
meetings with later classes have been frequent enough to let me 
learn that even where there was none of that personal intercourse 
which was the great advantage of the beginning days, he was always 
known as the students' best friend. 

The welfare of the graduates was his willing task, and after the 
days of his enfeebled age came upon him, he cheerfully gave whole 
evenings of his time to their entertainment, and to hearing their 
plans, advising upon their future, and sympathizing in their trials. 

He came at great personal sacrifice of ease to the meetings of 
our Alumni Association, and always spoke with the same fervor which 
characterized his dealing with subjects of scientific interest. This 
enthusiasm of his, this urging the graduates on to stirring endeavor 
in their professions, this complimenting them on their achievements, 
contributed very largely to the solidity of the Association. And the 
statement that he was expected to be present and address the meet- 
ing was a magical aid in securing attendance from those graduates 
whose absorption in their work might often have prevented their 
remembering the connections which had moulded their advancement. 

We gladly believe that the happiness of the students, as well as 
the successful organization of the Institute, was an appreciable ele- 
ment in the interest and energy with which he worked for, and the 
satisfaction he expressed in, the selection of his successor. 

The President — You have heard the resolutions which have 
been offered by Professor Atkinson and seconded by Mr. Tolman. 
If they rightly and justly express your sentiments on this occasion, 



10 



will you please manifest it by saying "Aye." [The Society responded 
by saying " Aye."] It is a vote. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, — When the theme is the great and 
manifold labors of Professor Rogers, the struggle against obstacles 
that might have depressed the sturdiest heart, the unceasing efforts, 
even amid weariness and pain, who should tell the story but his 
companion, trusted and tried in the time of difficulty and of doubt, in 
the day of small things, and of meetings in an upper chamber ; when 
faith in the right and trust in the truth were to those unfaltering 
fellow-laborers '• the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of 
things not seen " ? 

Dr. Runkle needs, under this roof, no introduction as he rises to 
speak of Professor Rogers. 

Dr. RcxKLE said : Mr. President and Fellow-members of the 
Society of Arts,-— After the lapse of twenty years we miss, and shall 
hereafter miss, the presence of him who, by common consent, must be 
regarded as the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
It is indeed true that manv others have aided in bringino: the Insti- 
tute to the high place it now holds as an educational power in this 
country, but all have simply entered into his labors. His spirit and 
work have been the vitalizing and shaping forces, and these have 
been so potent that all who have come within their influence have 
been brought into harmonious relations. It is in this broad and com- 
prehensive sense that Professor William B. Rogers is the founder of 
this Institute. But we do not meet tonight to mourn, but rather to 
gather strength and new devotion to duty in the contemplation of a 
life so nobly lived and so grandly ended. I trust that you will not 
consider the few brief and entirely inadequate words which I have 
to offer in relation to the last and crowning work of his life as the 
measure of my regard and affection, but simply as my contribution 
to the wreath of laurel which we, as a Society, tonight lovingly and 
loyally lay upon his grave. 

It seems to be a law of nature that when the time is ripe for 
an onward and upward step in the progress of humanity the needed 
man appears. Within the memory of many who now hear me, and 
particularly after the financial depression of 1857, this country 
seemed to enter upon a new career of industrial prosperity and 
progress. This stimulus was also felt in renewed attention to the 



\ 



11 

problem of education. With the exception perhaps of the Rensselaer 
polytechnic school at Troy, N. Y., no systematic and persistent 
attempt had been made in this country to build up an education 
based on the modern hinjruages with the mathematical, physical, and 
natural sciences in their relations to the industrial wants and progress 
of the country. A few colleges had feebly responded to the growing 
public demand by establishing scientific courses, so called, which 
proved but little more than cities of refuge for those too idle or too 
incompetent to follow the regular classical curriculum. Such, in 
brief, was the condition of the educational problem, and the attitude 
of the public mind, when the attention of Professor Rogers was 
called anew to it, in connection with suggestions that certain portions 
of this Back Bay should be devoted to public, and particularly to 
educational, uses. 

The thought which naturally suggests itself is, what constituted 
his peculiar fitness to undertake the solution of this important prob- 
lem ? First, clearly, his early and thorough training in the physical 
and natural sciences ; second, his great capacity and success as an 
investigator in so many and widely different fields, and his almost 
unrivalled jiowers as a teacher ; and, lastly, absolute public confidence 
in his personal character, and in the unselfishness of his motives. I 
regret that time will not permit me to make free use of an excellent 
biographical sketch, to be found in Popular Science Monthly for 
September, 1876, for a full account of his early life and scientific 
labors ; but I am sure that you will pardon a short quotation which 
we, who have so often heard him in this place and elsewhere, can 
fully apjireciate. The writer says : " At the semi-centennial of the 
University of Virginia, he was the central object, on whom were 
fixed the eyes and hearts of the great concourse ther(> assembled 
from all parts of the country. At the dinner of the alumni, he 
addressed them in a speech of half an hour. It was a wonderful 
specimen of eloquence. The old students beheld before them the 
same William B. Rogers who, thirty-five years before, had held 
them spell-bound in his class tof natural philosophy ; and as the great 
orator warmed up, these men forgot their age ; they were again young, 
and showed their enthusiasm as wildly as when in days of yore, enrap- 
tured by his eloquence, they made the lecture-room of the University 
ring with their applause. Such was the effect produced by the off- 



12 

hand words of this distinguished man of science and unrivalled orator ; 
and those who have heard him in his moments of inspiration will not 
wonder at the account we have given." 

Some years ago one of his old students at the University of 
Virginia, William LeRoy Brown, now president of the Alabama 
Agricultural and Mechanical College, gave me a glowing account of 
his lectures on astronomy. He said : " Every seat, window, and foot 
of floor space was filled, and the professor with difficulty made his 
way to his lecture table, where he found hardly sufficient room for 
himself. Other lecture-rooms were deserted, and the effect was such 
as only the highest oratory can produce." 

AVe can imagine the effect. His vivid imagination, tempered 
only by the severe logic of scientific induction, ranging and grasping 
the universe, is only surpassed by his unrivalled powers of expression 
and description. The celestial scenery is depicted on the canvass in 
colors of living light. The heavenly hosts march in majestic pro- 
cession before our exalted gaze, and we forget that we are not in the 
immediate presence of the living reality. 

Professor Rogers made Boston his permanent residence in 1853. 
During the few following years he delivered two or more courses of 
Lowell lectures, which gave to the citizens of Boston and vicinity an 
opportunity to become acquainted with his marvellous power as an 
exact and graphic expositor of scientific facts and methods. We 
come now to the time when he was to enter upon the last and crown- 
ing work of his life. This work I shall briefly consider in connection 
with six principal documents. I think they will show that the idea 
of building up such an institution as this was a growth, and did not 
spring forth from his mind, Minerva-like, in its full development. 
It was the result of years of patient study and reflection ; and this 
accounts for two remarkable facts. First, its adaptation to the public 
need ; and, second, that after so many years of experience the general 
plan has needed almost no modification. The six documents are : — 

1. Massachusetts Legislature. House document. No. 260, 
dated March 30, 1859. 

IL Memorial of the committee of associated institutions of 
science and art. House document, No. 13, dated January, 1860. 

in. Objects and plan of an institute of technology ; including 
a societv of arts, a museum of arts, and a school of industrial science. 



■ 



13 



Read by Professor Rogers at a meeting held at the rooms of the 
Board of Trade, October 5, 1860. 

lY. An account of the proceedings preliminary to the organiza- 
tion of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ; with a list of the 
members thus far associated, and an appendix containing petitions 
and resolutions in aid of the objects of the committee of Associated 
Institutions of Science and Art. 

V. An act of the General Court granting the charter, and a 
square of land, two-thirds to the Institute of Technology, and one- 
third to the Boston Society of Natural History, approved April 10, 
1861. 

YI. Scope and plan of the school of industrial science of the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as reported by the committee 
on instruction of the Institute, and adopted by the government May 
30, 1864. 

Document No. I contains the first evidence I find of Professor 
Rogers's interest in the plan to establish on the Back Bay " various 
institutions for the public benefit," which in the aggregate would 
constitute and might be known as the Massachusetts Conservatory of 
Art and Science. This document contains a memorial to the legis- 
lature, and the report of the joint special committee to whom the 
memorial was referred. The name of Professor Rogers only appears 
as a member of the memorial committee ; but it is not diflacult, I 
think, to see his hand both in the memorial and in the report of the 
committee. The memorial simply asks the State to reserve from 
sale certain portions of the Back Bay lands for the use of such public 
institutions as may associate together for the public good. It groups 
various scientific and industrial institutions under four sections, and 
proposes that each section shall occupy one square of the reserved 
land, the object of classification being to locate kindred institutions in 
such close proximity that they may cooperate in the erection of 
buildings and in other ways for the common good. 

Section I might be devoted to collections of impliments, models, 
and other objects pertaining to agriculture, horticulture, and pomol- 
ogy- 
Section II, to natural history, practical geology, and chemistry, 
with ample room for museums of specimens. 




14 



Section III, to those institutions devoted to the development of 
mechanics, manufactures, and commerce. 

Section IV, to fine arts, history, and ethnology. 

The space reserved for each section should be ample for these 
and all institutions of a kindred character which the progress of the 
State may develop. 

Such is the substance of the memorial, and the report of the 
joint committee is a carefully and ably drawn argument in favor of 
granting the land asked for, but closes by saying that the time is not 
propitious, and requests to be discharged from further consideration 
of the subject. To my mind the wisdom of this plan of reserving 
land on the Back Bay has been fully demonstrated by subsequent 
events, no matter by whom it was first suggested ; and as time passes 
its failure of full realization will be the more deeply regretted. It 
would have befen a powerful stimulus to the philanthropic of all 
classes and tastes, and in the light of today, after twenty-three years, 
we can see how grand the conception was. The concentration of 
public educational institutions in this immediate vicinity is even now 
gradually going on, but with nothing like the rapidity or favorable 
conditions which would have resulted had the State granted the 
prayer of the memorialists to the full extent. In this document we 
see only the idea of collections and museums, but no hint or sug- 
gestion of an institution for the education of young men in the 
scientific and industrial professions, by means of systematic courses 
of instruction. 

Document No. II contains a new and important step. The 
memorialists say that " as a further and important means of popular 
instruction in connection with the general plan, they would look con- 
fidently for the establishment, at an early day, of courses of piihlic 
lectures, which, while aiming at a familiar exposition of science and 
the arts, would exhibit in practical operation by working models, or 
otherwise, the more important discoveries and inventions as they 
arise. This feature, though limited at first, as in the well-known 
Polytechnic Institution of London, to subjects of a purely experimental 
or demonstrative kind, might be expected soon to extend itself to the 
fine arts and other branches of liberal culture, and, as a whole, could 
not fail to add great attractiveness, as well as usefulness, to the 
general plan. Indeed, considering how greatly the educational value 



15 



of museums is augmented by connecting with them an organized sys- 
tem of oral teachings, your memorialists are persuaded that ere 
long the public liberality would not only provide in this connection 
for popular lectures on the various branches of industrial science, on 
the plan of those of Morin, Pay en, and other eminent professors of 
the Conservatoire of Paris, but would establish a comprehensive 
polytechnic college which, like the Central School of Arts and Man- 
ufactures of the same city, or the great Trades Institute of Berlin, 
would put in practice a complete system of industrial education supple- 
mentary to the general training of other institutions, and fitted to 
equip its students with every scientific and technical principle applic- 
able to the leading industrial pursuits of the age." 

Here we see the various leading features of the Institute of 
Technology plainly foreshadowed. But I cannot leave this able and 
interesting document without making another short quotation, an 
eloquent statement of the value of the fine arts as an element in any 
system of education. 

"The fourth and last department mentioned in the general 
scheme, that of the fine arts and education, is too closely associated 
with the progress of a higher and more humane culture of the com- 
munity not to claim a place in any extensive educational plan for 
the public benefit. Your memorialists can add nothing to what has 
been said so often and so eloquently in proof of the ennobling 
influences which attend the contemplation of all great works of art. 
Most of what is true and beautiful in painting, sculpture, or archi- 
tecture is but the the material expression of truth or beauty pre- 
viously latent in the soul, and must, therefore, awaken in the observer 
sentiments akin to those from which the artist drew his inspiration. 
Originating in the purer and subtler elements of our intellectual 
nature, and calling into play the nicest discrimination of sense, as 
well as the most delicate moral susceptibility, the cultivation of the 
fine arts must be regarded as a necessary supplement in every wise 
system of education to the teachings of practical science and the 
more purely logical exercises of thought. Nor should we, as is 
sometimes done, regard them too exclusively as merely ornamental 
portions of the social fabric. If in this connection they may be 
represented by the wreath of stone that crowns the Corinthian shaft 
with leafy beauty, while adding nothing to its supporting power, they 



16 



are still more truly symbolized by the towering arches and swelling 
domes, whose very grace and grandeur are conditions inseparable 
from their strength." 

This appeal also failed ; but believing that the failure was in 
part due to the incompleteness and vagueness in which they had 
presented this feature of their general plan ; and finding that in spite 
of their ill-success an earnest and increasing interest was very gener- 
ally felt for the establishment of an institution devoted to industrial 
science and education, the committee determined on takino^ such 
steps as were practicable towards the organization, in a preliminary 
form, of an institution of this character. On May 28, 1860, the 
general committee appointed a sub-committee, and charged it " with 
the duty of preparing and reporting a plan of an institution designed 
for the advancement of the industrial arts and sciences and practical 
education in the Commonwealth." To this work Professor Rogers 
devoted the summer of 1860, which resulted in document No. Ill, 
" Objects and Plan of an Institute of Technology." This able and 
comprehensive report, after acceptance by the general committee, 
was read by Professor Rogers atca public meeting held at the rooms 
of the Board of Trade, October 5, 1860, and became the lever by 
which the public, and then the State, was moved during the following 
year. This document is too familiar to need a single word. 

We now come to document No. IV, which contains an account of 
what I have always regarded as generalship of a high order. It was 
well known that a large and influential class of citizens, not only of 
Boston but of various portions of the State, had become deeply 
interested in the scheme as developed in " Objects and Plan," and 
the question was how to bring this influence to bear most effectively 
upon the next legislature. This document details the several steps 
which were taken to crystallize this general interest into a living and 
effective organization before it had secured a legal existence. 

The next appeal to the legislature was successful, and brings us 
to document No. V, the charter, and grant of a single, instead of 
several, squares of land ; but granted only on the condition that the 
increase in value of the lands adjoining the grant should sufficiently 
appreciate in value to cover its appraised value. This rather sharp 
bargain on the part of the State was closed the following year by the 



17 



repeal of the condition, the legislature thus admitting that the suffi- 
cient appreciation had taken place. 

We now come to document No. VI, the last, but by no means the 
least, in importance, entitled "Scope and Plan of the School of 
Industrial Science of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology," 
and which might also justly be styled its intellectual charter, so closely 
has it been followed in all essential points to this very day. In this 
document we see more clearly the breadth, depth, and variety of 
Professor Rogers's scientific knowledge, and his large experience in 
college teaching and discipline. It needed just this combination of 
acquirements and experience to put his conceptions into working 
shape, to group together those studies and exercises which naturally 
and properly belong to each professional course, and thus enable others 
to see the guiding lines which must direct and limit their work in its 
relations to the demands of other departments. 

The experimental element in the instruction of our school — a 
feature which has been widely recognized as characteristic — is 
undoubtedly due to the stress and distinctness given to it in the 
" Scope and Plan." In our discipline we must also give credit to 
the tact and laro^e-heartedness of Professor Roofers, in the fact that 
we are entirely free from all petty rules and regulations relating to 
conduct, free from all antagonism between teachers and students, 
living in the pure atmosphere of mutual regard and esteem, and 
securing from pupils a devotion to their work and a loyalty to the 
school as delightful as it is exceptional. Nor is this influence 
evanescent and perishing. It lives in the life of the man in after 
years, and becomes a vital element in his character. He has learned 
to value true manhood, and ends by desiring to live a true life him- 
self. In this way the life and influence of Professor Rogers have 
become a never-failing and ever-growing spring of private and public 
beneficence for all generations to come, rendering his name and fame 
as immortal as the race itself, into whose service his long life, 
ennobled by its consecration to human welfare and improvement, has 
now entered. 

With these brief references to the documentary evidence of 
Professor Rogers's work in the founding of the Institute, I pass to 
an equally brief consideration of his special work in connection with 
this department, merely noting that the body now known as the 



hs 



Society of Arts of the Institute constituted, at the beginning, the 
corporation. It was soon found that this body was too large to 
perform readily the executive functions of the corporation, and an 
application to the legislature resulted in limiting the corporation to 
those who at the time constituted its officers. 

Our first meeting was held April 8, 1862, at the rooms of the 
Board of Trade, and was organized by the choice of the Hon. F. W. 
Lincoln as chairman and John D. Runkle as secretary. 

Professor Rogers presented the act of incorporation and a code 
of by-laws for adoption ; and after the organization an election of 
officers resulted in the choice of Professor Rogers as the President of 
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Now let us listen to the report of the first address of President 
Rogers. On taking the chair, he returned thanks for the honor con- 
ferred upon him ; and, after briefly referring to the labors and anxieties 
encountered in the previous stages of the enterprise, spoke of the 
responsibility which now rested on all to aid in successfully develop- 
ing the great scheme of practical education and industrial improve- 
ment to which they had in a measure become pledged to the com- 
munity. Should they succeed, as present indications assured them 
they would, they might well claim the enduring thanks of the State, 
and of the friends of progress everywhere. He furthermore remarked 
that, notwithstanding the engrossing interest of public affairs, and the 
claims of patriotism upon the liberality of our fellow-citizens, he had 
the satisfaction of being able to announce that the Institute could 
even now point to prospective contributions equivalent in utility to 
more than one hundred thousand dollars, partly in the form of a 
testamentary provision of Ralph Huntington, Esq., of fifty thousand 
dollars, and partly, on the promise of an annual appropriation of at 
least three thousand dollars for the educational department of the 
Institute, from a trust fund, well known for its magnitude, and the 
trustees of which are distinguished for the beneficence of its applica- 
tion in the direction, and for the advancement and improvement, of 
public instruction. In addition to the preceding, it is gratifying, the 
president observed, to announce a contribution of three thousand 
dollars to the Institute by the executors of the late venerable lady, 
Miss Sarah P. Townsend. 

No one can read the early records of this Society without being 



JH; 



profoundly impressed with the amazing range of President Rogers's 
knowledo-e, and the wonderful tact and skill with which he brouo^ht 
it to bear on nearly all the subjects presented. How often, after 
some important subject had been rather crudely presented by one 
whose ability consisted in investigation rather than in exposition, has 
he, by a few master-strokes, exposed its vital points to the light of 
day. 

Your records, from the first organization, April 8, 1862, to the 
failure of his health in the fall of 1868, show that he recognized to 
the full the responsibility which he had assumed in accepting the 
presidency of the Institute. His labors were incessant and unrelax- 
ing. He literally gave his all, his service, and even his feeble health, 
— made strong only by a will which knew no yielding, save to that 
power to which all at last must bow. With partially restored 
health, and nerved by the old will, he returned to the presidency in 
1878. But after three more years of loving service, admonished by 
the gentle warnings of advancing years, he again transferred the 
burden of care and responsibility to younger hands. Blessed beyond 
the lot of most men, he was permitted to see with his own eyes the 
ripe and abundant fruit of the tree which his own hand had planted, 
and w^hich, for so many years, he had nourished with his heart's 
blood, without thought or hope of reward save in the blessings of 
those whom he, in the providence of God, had started with a " God- 
speed you " along the highway of life. 

And now the graduation day of the class of 1882 was approach- 
ing. All looked forward to it with uncommon emotion. It was a 
day which will be forever memorable in the annals of the Institute. 
The new president was to preside and introduce to the public the 
candidates for honors well earned by four years of patient, persistent, 
and successful study. The first president was to honor the occasion 
by his presence, and grace it by his eloquence. The day opened 
gloriously and full of promise. At the appointed hour Huntington 
Hall was filled with an interested and expectant audience. The 
programme of the day's exercises was closely followed ; and, finally, 
came the moment w^hen all eyes and hearts were lovingly turned 
to the central figure of the occasion. President "Walker arose and 
said : — 

Ladies and Gentlemen, — During the year now closed the Insti- 



20 



tute of Technology has sustained a loss which no accession of talent 
or of zeal, from any source, could make good. Its revered and 
honored president — the president also of the National Academy of 
Sciences — has resigned the cares and labors which have come to 
weigh heavily upon him, and which only his indomitable spirit and 
chivalric sense of duty have enabled him so long to sustain ; but in 
order to signify his affection and constant devotion to the school 
which owes so much to him, and of which he has ever been so great 
a part, he has consented to allow himself to remain professor emeritus 
of geology and physics, the chair which he occupied in the infancy of 
the Institute, while yet the tide rose and fell, twice a day, over the 
spot where we now sit in this hall devoted to science and industrial 
art. In a high sense Professor Rogers will always remain President 
of the Institute of Technology. Present or absent, his spirit will 
preside over it. No man can succeed him in his fame ; no man can 
hope to do more than successfully administer the school which he 
alone could have created. Founder and father is his title perpetual, 
by a patent indefeasible. 

By a kindly fortune, which we cannot too highly appreciate, we 
have Professor Rogers with us this morning. He has consented to 
say a few words of counsel and cheer to these, his former pupils. 

Honored sir, in your presence no voice but yours should give the 
benediction to these young men and women as they step over the 
threshold of the cloister, out of tutelage, into the world. 

After the hearty applause which greeted this felicitous introduc- 
tion had subsided, Professor Rogers said: — ^ 

The manner in which I have been received, and the words you 
have uttered, would, even if I were in the vigor of early manhood, 
affect me so deeply as to make reply difficult. I confess to being an 
enthusiast on the subject of the Institute, but I am not ashamed of 
this enthusiasm when I see what it has come to be. It is true that 
we commenced in a small way, with a few earnest students, in some 
rooms fitted up in Summer Street, while, as your president has said, 
the tides rose and fell twice daily where we now are. Our early 

* I am indebted to Mr. George W". Blodgett of the class of 1873, M. I. T.,for the 
report of Professor Rogers's last address, as written down from memory on the day- 
after its delivery, and to Mr. H. A. Carson of the class of 1869 for a few suggested 
changes. 



21 



labors with the legislature in behalf of the Institute were sometimes 
met not only with repulse but with ridicule, yet we were encouraged 
and sustained by the great interest manifested by many in the enter- 
prise. Formerly a wide separation existed between theory and 
practice ; now in every fabric that is made, in every structure that is 
reared, they are closely united into one interlocking system, — the 
practical is based upon the scientific, and the scientific is solidly built 
upon the practical. You have not been treated here today to any- 
thing in the nature of oratorical display ; no decorations, no flowers, 
no music, but you have seen in what careful and painstaking manner 
these young men and women have been prepared for their future 
occupations in life. And although the extracts from the theses 
which have been presented have been unavoidably largely stated in 
the technical terms of science, yet they have shown a marvelous 
thoroughness and accuracy, and in some instances are valuable con- 
tributions to our knowledge of the subjects of which they treat. 
What you have seen has been no research under the direction of a 
tutor and by his assistance, or prepared for display on this occasion, 
but it has been the ordinary work of the students, built upon the 
principles they have acquired in the earlier years of their scientific 
course, and they show how thoroughly they are equipped for the 
practical industries, either in the laboratory or in the field. 

As I stand here today and see what the Institute is, what it has 
already accomplished, and what it is at present doing, I call to mind 
the beginnings of science. I remember that one hundred and fifty 
years ago Stephen Hales published a pamphlet on the subject of 
illuminating gas, in which he stated that his researches had demon- 
strated that 128 grains of bituminous coal — 

"Bituminous coal," these were his last words on earth. Here 
he bent forward, as if consulting some notes on the table before him, 
then slowly regaining an erect position, threw up his hands, and 
was translated from the scene of his earthly labors and triumphs to 
" the tomorrow of death," where the mysteries of this life are solved, 
and the disembodied spirit finds unending satisfaction in contemplat- 
ing the new and still unfathomable mysteries of the infinite future. 

And now, beloved president, teacher, and friend, all hail and 
farewell ! May thy loving spirit continue to find peace and happi- 
ness in the everlasting embrace of truth and righteousness. 



22 



At the close of Dr. Runkle's remarks the president introduced 
Professor Charles R. Cross. 

Professor Cross said: The first physical paper published by 
Professor Rogers was devoted to a subject which at that time was 
occupying the thoughts of some of the ablest living scientific men, — 
the laws and theory of the voltaic battery ; and in it, as in every one 
of his papers, from the earliest of all, " On an Analysis of Oyster 
Shells," to the latest, we find the same elegance of presentation, simpli- 
city of experimental methods, and modesty of expression. The 
authors — for the name of Henry D. Rogers also appears joined to that 
of his brother — after describing some interesting and, at the time, 
novel effects, finally "dismiss the subject," to quote their words, 
'* ho})ing that some gifted individual, Faraday perhaps, in following 
up his present brilliant discoveries in electricity, may penetrate the 
obscurity which now conceals the internal movements of this mighty 
and wonderful instrument." 

And most unfortunately for the progress of physics in this 
country, though happily for its sister science, the course of events 
drew Professor Rogers into the field of geology in which his greatest 
triumphs as an investigator were won, and no purely physical original 
research again appeared from him for a long while, although a few 
physico-chemical papers, mostly relating with more or less directness 
to geological questions, were published. 

After a considerable period, during which his name had become 
well known to learned men throughout both our own and foreign 
countries, he returned to his first love, and in 1855-56 we find him 
discussing, in a most interesting manner, the subject of binocular 
vision, a topic which, owing to the invention of the stereoscope by 
Brewster, improved by Wheatstone, together with the researches 
of Dove, was then attracting the attention of investigators abroad. 
He analyzed and explained a number of curious and interesting 
phenomena of binocular vision, and, as in all his experiments, made 
the most wonderfully simple apparatus serve his purpose in the 
investigation of new and unexplained phenomena. Much of this 
apparatus is preserved by the department of physics of the Institute 
among the most valued possessions. 

A paper discussing the phenomena of smoke-rings and rotating 
rings in liquids — a subject recently developed by Helmholtz and 



23 

Sir "William Thomson — appeared in Silliman's Journal, for 1858, 
and in the same year an ingenious research on the properties of 
sonorous flames was communicated to the Warren Club (as it was 
then called) of this city, and was soon after published in SiUi- 
man's Journal. In the course of this research he showed the fallacy 
of certain ideas that had been up to that time generally entertained, 
and anticipated Count Schafgottsch in the invention of a beautiful 
optical proof of the discontinuity of the singing hydrogen flame. 

The last original scientific paper bearing his name that was 
formally published is, so far as appears from the catalogue of the 
Royal Society, an ''Account of Apparatus and Processes for Chem- 
ical and Photometrical Testing of Illuminating Gas," which appeared 
in the British Association report for 1864, it having been presented 
at the annual meeting of that body. 

Yet, while this seems to have been his last formal paper (with 
the exception, perhaps, of some very recent fragments and his 
** Eulogy of Professor Henry," presented to the National Academy 
of Sciences, of which he was president), all who attended the early 
meetings of the Society of Arts up to the time whea failing health 
obliged him to seek relaxation from some of his public duties know 
that had his fortnightly remarks been formally printed, applied science 
would have been a s^reat f^ainer therebv. 

I ought not to omit to mention in this connection as one among 
his many useful and laborious works an earlier one, — the prepara- 
tion of a text-book for the use of the students of the University of 
Virginia, " The Elements of Mechanical Philosophy," a book long 
out of print, but far superior to any other elementary work on the 
subject that I have ever seen, in the lucid explanations which are 
given, and the distinctness with which the leading principles of the 
science are enunciated, reminding one of the best style of Dr. Thomas 
Young. The work is marked throughout by that felicity of diction 
which characterized his every effort, whether spoken or written, even 
up to the last unfinished sentence which fell from his lips. 

But no idea of the magnitude and value of the labors of Pro- 
fessor Rogers in any of the numerous fields of his activity can be 
gathered from a mere enumeration of his published papers. Did we 
think thus, we should overlook the greatest works of his life. For 
while he possessed a comiilete mastery of those processes of inves- 



24 



ligation which were known to the generation with which he grew up, 
he saw most clearly that science has a duty as well as a privilege ; 
that while it is her noble privilege to search for truth, even the most 
abstract truth, whenever and wherever it may be found, yet it is her 
duty — or perhaps, as he would have said, her higher privilege — to 
so diffuse the knowledge which she has attained that the human race 
as a whole, even to the poorest and meanest of its members, shall be 
benefited thereby. He recognized the fact, too often forgotten by 
scientist and artisan alike, that neither pure investigation nor empir- 
ical practice alone can suffice to give the best outcome of scientific 
work. The knowledge that is not diffused becomes stagnant, and 
ceases to be a source of intellectual health. And so. while understand- 
ing and appreciating the works of a Hamilton inventing a new cal- 
culus, a Fresnel untwisting the complexities of a group of light waves, 
or a Faraday investigating the complex distribution of lines of mag- 
netic force, we find him equally interested in the economical distribu- 
tion of steam heat, or the improvement of the gas engine. Indeed, I 
think that the last scientific address ever made by him was one relat- 
ing the probable advantages to be derived from the general introduc- 
tion of water gas. 

This desire, that the truths of science should be universally 
diffused and find an application in the useful art^, led him to throw 
his energy into various practical undertakings. Among these was 
one of particular importance at the time. When the laws regulating 
the manufacture of coal gas in this State first went into operation, he 
was the first State inspector of gas, and by his scientific knowledge 
and practical skill he made the value of such work apparent to all. 

And this same spirit led him to his crowning work in the estab- 
lishment of this Institute, a work whose details have already been 
sketched by another and abler hand, so that I need only allude to it. 
I must, however, call attention to one important and. to me. especially 
interesting point. The design of laboratory teaching in physics to 
larije classes was oritjinal with Professor Rogers. Laboratories for 
physical research there had been. — laboratories in which a few 
advanced students might work out new problems ; but until he sug- 
gested the plan no one seems to have thought it possible to teach the 
use of physical instruments and physical measurement in that way to 
a large body of students pursuing a regular course of professional 



25 



training. And though to another was confided tlie actual work of 
first proving by experinient tlie practical value of this instruction, his 
was the far-seeing mind that perceived in advance both the possibility 
and the great value of such teaching in physics as the Institute was, 
I believe, the first in the world to give. 

His delight in expounding the truths of science waxed rather 
than waned with his increasing years ; and during the years when the 
state of his health rendered it imperative that no regular teaching 
should be done by him we still find him fortnight after fortnight, 
through each successive winter, guiding and inspiring the scientific 
and literary association of gentlemen of which he was so long the 
honored and beloved president ; and doing quietly here a work 
broader and deeper because of its very retirement from publicity, — a 
work whose benefit has been greatly, though indirectly, felt in various 
ways by many who never even knew of the existence of the organi- 
zation. 

One of the characteristics that always impressed me very deeply 
in Professor Rogers was the intense enjoyment with which he 
witnessed any new experiment or any elegant and striking illustra- 
tion of a physical principle. It was delightful to see the enthusiasm 
which he felt over the simplest fact of nature when presented in a 
new aspect. lie always showed that freshness of ap})reciation which 
too often dies as experience grows deeper, and combined the wisdom 
of the sage with the enthusiastic appreciation of the child. 

It was the intensity of his enjoyment of the laws of nature, 
and the methods by which these are ascertained, that, added to his 
unequalled clearness, made a mere description of apparatus or experi- 
ment from his lips more valuable than the actual exhibition of the 
ai)paratus or performance of the experiment by another. I can never 
forget the last time I heard him speak upon a scientific theme. He 
was explaining in a familiar way a new method of determining the 
mean density of the earth. His explanation of the subject was 
directed to gentlemen mostly not professed studejits of science ; and 
in the hands of most teachers such a subject, described from black- 
board drawings alone, and with no apparatus or experiment to catch 
the eye and mind, would have been dull and heavy. But his dt^licate 
appreciation of the beauty of the direct and simple process which lie 
was describing was so impressed upon every word and gesture that 



26 

no one could fail to understand the value both of the process and 
results. 

And, finally, I think that all who knew Professor Rogers have 
most profoundly felt that greater than any of his works was the man 
himself. Often a afreat author or investiojator will seem dwarfed, as 
it were, in comparison with the results of his labors. Not so with 
him. The intellect was broad as well as profound. His thoroughly 
developed mind found no subject touching nature or humanity which 
failed to interest him. Nor was this all. For still less than his 
intellectual abilities can we forget his moral earnestness, his love of 
truth, his scorn of everything ungenerous, mean, or unmanly. 

To those whose privilege it was to know him, as all his pupils 
and colleagues knew him, in more intimate personal relations, \vhat 
tender memories arise ! Noble in all his thoughts, unselfish in every 
action, kindly alike whether he had to praise or to blame, cheerful 
when circumstances were depressing, hopeful even when the imme- 
diate present w^as perplexing, sympathetic and appreciative, — in 
short, all that a friend ought to be or can be, — such to us all was he 
whom we mourn. 

The President: Ladies and Gentlemen, — -It is our peculiar 
good fortune this evening to have with us a gentleman who, though 
coming from a distant State, is known to all of us by his great work 
in the Appalachian range, where Professor Rogers first won his world- 
wide reputation as a geologist. This gentleman, a co-laborer with 
Professor Rogers, has come from Virginia to oifer a tribute, at this 
meeting, to his memory. 1 have the great pleasure of introducing to 
you Major Jedediah Hotchkiss, of Virginia. 

Major Hotchkiss said: Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, 
— I must apologize for appearing before you simply to talk of my 
friend and of your friend. I have no formal address to give you, 
but have" trusted the inspiration of this hour and these surroundings 
to recall memories, and suggest words, befitting this occasion. 

A familiarity, Jasting during the life of a generation, with Pro- 
fessor Rogers and with his work, one intensified by correspondence 
and visits from him, was mine. In fact, sir, it was but a few days 
before his, to us, untimely death that he was beneath my roof, in the 
famed valley of the Shenandoah, beyond the Blue Mountains of Vir- 
ginia, that he loved so well, whither he had come to talk over, in his 



earnest and enlightening way, the old but never wearying story of his 
geological work and discoveries in Virginia, to see and rejoice in the 
prosperity of that great State, and note the development of the vast 
mineral resources which he had seen, but in vision only, when, nearly 
half a century ago, he was the director of a geological survey, one of 
the first made in the United States, of the more than sixty thousand 
square miles of territory now included in Virginia and West Vir- 
ginia. All these lead me to desire to contribute my tokens of re- 
membrance and of respect to this meeting called to honor his 
memory. 

The addresses, to which I have had the very great pleasure of 
listening this evening, give to me, for the first time, information of 
the exact period of the birth and organization of this now well and 
widely known institution for technical education, and of the charac- 
teristic labors of Professor Rogers in that work. It is strange that 
in the midst of the storms of civil war such an institution should 
have been born and organized ; and it is equally strange that to the 
civil convulsions of the Old World we owe the fact that Professor 
Rogers was one of us. His father was a Scotch-Irishman, a disciple 
of the gifted but unfortunate Emmet. The leader in arrest, and on 
trial for his life, his followers sought safety in flight, and Patrick 
Kerr Rogers found a refuge in our land of freedom of opinions, and 
here became a Scotch-Irish teacher, one of that fervid and indomit- 
able race of instructors that, in so many ways, has helped to build up, 
even from the very first, and much more than is generally conceded, 
this great country of ours. 

Patrick Kerr Rogers, from all we can hear of him, was a learned 
and well-trained man, probably a graduate of the great Universit}^ of 
Edinburg, at that time one of the leading scientific schools of the 
world. He brought his science and his training with him, and, 
naturally we may almost say, sought Philadelphia, the birth-place of 
scientific research on this continent, and then the home of our ablest 
scientists of all classes. There he opened and taught a school in 
which instruction in the natural sciences formed a leading feature ; 
and there was born, among other sons well-known to fame, William 
Barton Rogers. Thus it was ordered that from infancy our friend 
should become familiar with the objects and teachings of natural 
science, for that most engaged the attention of his father, — a most 



28 

fond and devoted parent, as I know from the remembrances of a 
friend and neighbor of mine, still living, who was his pupil, — - so that 
by a process of absorption as it were, and from the very necessities 
of his surroundings, that son, even before he attained his majority, 
was fitted for and became a skillful teacher of natural science. 

Before young AVilliam's education was completed, his father, 
whose reputation as a teacher had in a few years become national, was 
called to assume the chair of natural philosophy and mathematics in 
the College of William and Mary, in Virginia, the second in age 
among the colleges of the United States, an institution of learning 
that not only in its name, but also in all its traditions, recalled the 
memories and principles of the House of Orange. The "humani- 
ties " were the educators at William and Mary when the Scotch- 
Irish professor entered upon the duties of his chair ; but under his 
teaching natural philosophy, the natural science of that day, soon 
became a training, observing, and thought-awakening power. Most 
of his pupils are dead ; but some survive, and these remember him as 
an able and enthusiastic teacher. 

At William and Mary, under the wise training of his father and 
the other distinguished professors then occupying the chairs of that 
venerable college, having for fellow students those that were soon to 
become the leading men of Virginia, and where at every step the 
organic remains of former ages arrest the attention and provoke to 
thought and enquiry, there William Barton Rogers completed his 
education and became a citizen of Virginia. From his Irish-born 
father he inherited that wealth of language with which we are all so 
familiar ; from that father and his associates he had the best intellect- 
ual training of that day in this country ; but in addition to these he 
seems to have been born with the eye of a prophet, and the discern- 
ment of a seer in the world of science. He had that inward vision 
that ran back and forth along the lines of time, and saw and compre- 
hended causes and effects, and by its aid reached conclusions, or sug- 
gested them, far in advance of the knowledge of his days, certainly 
of his early ones. 

It is not often the lot of any one man to fill for two generations 
the position of a scientific teacher, to be recognized for such a length 
of time as an expounder of science ; yet such was the fortune of 
Professor Rogers. After he had graduated at the College of William 



29 



and Mary, at the age of twenty-five, he began a course of lectures 
upon natural science at the Maryland Institute, at Baltimore. After 
lecturing there for a year, his father was suddenly called hence. 
Naturally the mantle of the father fell upon the son ; and in the year 
1828 he was elected to fill the chair of natural philosophy and of 
mathematics in the College of William and Mary. That was the 
year in which Thomas Jefferson had succeeded in establishing and 
opening to students the great university now known as the University 
of Virginia, an organization of which your Institute is, in many 
respects, an outgrowth. 

It was a strange connection that our beloved friend had with 
Thomas Jeiferson. Soon after his graduation, his father took him 
to visit the " Sage of Monticello ; " — to that famous home, sought by 
the scholars of all lands, the seat of unbounded Virginia hospitality, 
perched on the very crest of the Coast Range of the Atlantic High- 
lands, on an outlook, high and lifted up, from which the delighted 
eye wanders eastward over the extended undulations of the Midland 
plain of Virginia, then westward over the lovely valleys and charm- 
ing gradations of hill and mountain forms of Piedmont, to where the 
grand Blue Eidge, the noblest range of our Atlantic border, bounds 
the horizon's verge and stretches far away, northward and southward, 
in an almost endless perspective. He found Thomas Jefferson, not 
the President of the United States, not the great politician, not the 
famous scholar, but the " Father of the University of Virginia," as he 
desired himself to be remembered, seated on his portico, glass in hand, 
looking across the lovely Piedmont valley below and to the west- 
ward, watching eagerly the rising of the buildings of the University 
on the slopes beyond, his sole ambition and desire then being to see 
them completed and occupied. Then and there William B. Rogers 
was introduced to Thomas Jefferson. The quick eye of the philoso- 
pher instantly saw that no ordinary man was before him. At once 
he began to question him as to his knowledge of natural science, as to 
his knowledge of mechanics, as to his knowledge of mathematics ; 
and that done, he turned to the father and spoke to him of the son 
who had a future full of promise before him. It was there that 
was conceived within the bosom of William B. Rogers a wonder 
whether the day might not come when he would have a professor- 
ship in that institution. There the seed of desire was sown. The 



^0 



appro viug words of Thomas Jefferson begat the notion in the boy 
that he might become one of the men who should give to the world 
the teachings that Thomas Jefferson would approve. 

But my duty perhaps tonight, sir, is to speak of the early scien- 
tific work of Professor Rogers with which I presume most of you are 
not so familiar as I am. 

Fifty years ago there was no such thing as the science of 
geology. All the records were like mythological stories. The world 
was without form and void to the observer. The deluge had ascended 
to the tops of the mountains, and each and every one that looked out 
upon the world looked upon it as one that had been deluge-swept. 
One had recorded a few observations here, another there ; none had 
come up even to the first letters of the alphabet of geology. It was 
a science unknown. Then it was that William B. Rogers, having 
taken his place as professor of natural philosophy and mathematics 
at the College of William and Mary, had his attention first arrested 
by the stratification of the marl beds along the shores of the York 
and the James, there where the first settlement of the white man was 
made in America. His attention awakened by this stratification of 
these recent rocks, we find him at once carefully observing and im- 
mediately putting his observations before the public. He soon ascer- 
tained that these tertiary marls were rich in fertilizing elements that 
ought to be applied to the fields of Tidewater Virginia that had been 
wanting them so long. Then William B. Rogers offers the results of 
his observations to the legislature, and publishes a series of letters 
upon the value of marl as a fertilizer. 

The very last paper which he prepared, which was handed to me 
but two days ago for publication, was upon the discovery of creta- 
ceous beds in this same region. His first w^ork and his last were in 
the same geological field. 

The publication of these papers provoked inquiry throughout 
the great State of Virginia, that then possessed sixty-six thousand 
square miles of territory, stretching from the Atlantic to the Ohio. 

Next we find Professor Rogers going before the legislature of 
Virginia, and there, in the prime of his youth, giving to that body 
one of those characteristic addresses, such as in after years made him 
famous, stating what he had discovered, and giving results that we 
find verified in the geological surveys of today. Professor Rogers 



.11 



was then professor at the College of William and Mary, but .^ oon his 
scientific reputation brought about his election as professor of natural 
philosophy in the University of Virginia ; and so his first great wish 
was realized. An earnest desire for information concerning the 
structure and mineral resources of the State, stimulated by the elo- 
quent presentation in public, by Professor Rogers, of the few facts 
concerning these already known, led at once to a reconnoissance by 
him by State authority. That single season of 1835 spent in looking 
over the great State resulted in a report so full of discoveries, so full 
of valuable information, that a detailed geological and mineralogical 
survey was ordered and provided for by the legislature, and William 
B. Rogers became the State Geologist of Virginia, and began the 
researches that laid broadly and enduringly the foundations not only 
of Virginian but at the same time of American geology, and those 
of his own lasting fame. 

Time forbids that I should enter into a sketch of the geology of 
that time. Indeed, it will suffice to say there was none ; no one had 
even discovered the order of the rocks. Then it was that, as soon 
as his appointment was made. Professor Rogers started out to cross 
the entire width of the State, a distance of nearly four hundred miles, 
to carefully study and investigate its soils, its minerals, its rocks. We 
find him first, — for the journey is a familiar one ; we have gone over 
much of it together, and we have talked about it many times, — after 
giving a passing, but even then an intelligent, glance at the old rocks 
(the metamorphic of that day) of Midland and Piedmont, and re- 
calling his previous studies in the tertiary of Tidewater, pausing upon 
the crest of the Blue Ridge, the uplifted western border of the pri- 
mal continent, and gazing inquiringly westward across the Great Val- 
ley, with its parallel lines of northeast-southwest trending hills, to the 
equally parallel and like trending grand mountain ranges of Appa- 
lachia. This first reflective view no doubt suggested what afterwards 
became a settled conviction, that these rigid waves of mountains and 
valleys were the outcome of the filling and breaking up of a former 
westward-extending ocean. 

As he went farther he soon discovered that these great rock-based 
waves had a continuity in all their convolutions and involutions until 
at last, having reached the border of the great carboniferous plateau, 
the border of bituminous coal, he saw, in its long westward decline. 



32 



where the ocean had once stretched onward to the far West across 
the broad valley of the Mississippi. Having confidence in his opin- 
ions, he put that first observation on paper, and gave it to the world. 
There it stands today, the record of the first broad reading of Ameri- 
can geology that was ever done ; and, today, after hundreds have 
become famous in American geology, that is good reading still. It 
will remain so. Having discovered the border of this ocean in which 
the rock-beds now exposed in the mountains and valleys had been 
originally and successively deposited, he soon discovered the sequence 
of these rocks, and then, with that simplicity which characterized 
whatever he did he at once proceeded to group them in numbered for- 
mations as in orderly succession they presented themselves to his view. 
In his very first report he discouraged naming anything in this 
country by a repetition of the names used in Europe. He says : " No 
one has sufficient information to warrant the application of any 
known geological terms to the rocks of this country ; afterwards, 
when we know more, we may venture to see wherein our rocks 
resemble those of Europe ; " and until that was done he simply pro- 
ceeded to number them one, two, three, four, five, up to sixteen ; and 
for all subsequent observations he simply divided the American 
geological column, all of which he found in Virginia, into sixteen sub- 
divisions. It was but five years ago that the geologists of West Vir- 
ginia discovered that there was a Permian formation in that State, 
this side of the Mississippi, the boundaries of which they marked out. 
What was it ? It was simply the number xvi of the first explora- 
tions of Professor Rogers. But not contented with that, he pro- 
ceeded, and, in a work that continued through the years 1835, 1836, 
1837, 1838, 1839, 1840, in which he spent for the State of Virginia 
in all about forty-five thousand dollars, he extended dozens of lines 
of sections across that State from one border to the other ; and there 
is nothing in American geology that has yet been published that is 
better than those sections are today. It was but two days ago that I 
first had the pleasure of unrolling and seeing all these and of looking 
at them in the light of our present knowledge : I do not hesitate to 
say that, when they shall be given to the world, they will throw light 
upon problems that such students as Thomas Sterry Hunt are now 
discussing. We hope they will soon be before the world, that it may 
judge the man by these early-appearing geological volumes. 



3^ 



We all regret that a man who filled so large a place in the woi-ld 
of science should have left behind him so little embodied in printed 
language for us to refer to and read and read again. Even his dry 
annual reports to the legislature of the State of Virginia are today 
delightful reading. In them he always looks forward in vision to the 
time when her hills, filled with rich ores, should contribute their share 
to the wealth of the world. I well remember how^ delighted he was 
on coming down to Virginia, where I had the pleasure of accompany- 
ing him across the State, when he found realized many of these 
anticipations. It was with real joy that he looked upon the great 
furnaces now daily turning out their hundreds of tons of iron from 
ores that once he saw in vision beneath the surface. It was a 
delight to see that boyish step and ardent smile when he saw the 
grand developments that had taken place, and to hear him recall his 
first visit to that spot, and what he had mentally seen there, that was 
now laid bare by the hand of industry, so that any man could see it. 

Professor Rogers, as the gentlemen that have preceded me 
have said, had a way of inspiring all that came within the reach of 
his magic eye. The sound ^ of his wonderful voice gave a charm to 
whatever he said. All over the State of Virginia even now you will 
continually meet people in the country, old men and old women, who 
recollect the days when Professor Rogers drove up with his gig, with 
Levi, his negro servant, behind him on horseback, accompanying him 
in his geological rambles, — recollect with pleasure that familiar 
lecture in the morning from the doorstep ; for he never went away 
without leaving with each one that he visited a new vision of that 
which before they had seen with sealed eyes that it was his delight 
to unseal. One of the best of our living structural geologists, one of 
that same Scotch-Irish race, when a flaxen-haired boy, heard Pro- 
fessor Rogers describe to a group of listeners one of the grand arches 
of one of Virginia's mountain ranges, when, stooping down, like an- 
other great teacher, he wrote its structure in the sand, but wrote for 
all time. The boy never forgot the graphic rock story, and today 
Professor Campbell of Washington and Lee University remembers 
as an inspiration to research and study that lesson there taught by 
the wayside. How often do the gifted and the learned forget that a 
word given in season is " like apples of gold in pictures of silver." Let 
them remember that teaching spirit, and forget not to scatter by the 



:U 



wayside the seeds of the knowledge they hold in blessed possession 
but as a trust for the common good. 

It would furnish material for a singular study, — that primal 
geological circle. Levi, the negro serving-man, was in it. He 
became a geologist. He learned to think as his master thought ; 
and when the great French geologist, Daubeny, came to visit Pro- 
fessor Rogers, the Frenchman was not up to riding horseback, so he 
took a seat in the gig, and Levi drove him, and as they rode through 
the grand sections of Appalachian structure there displayed, Levi 
gave him lessons in American geology. " Dis, sar," said he, "we 
call number one. Mighty fine crap (out-crop) ob it 'long here." 
He had so well learned the lesson from the great master of American 
geology, he could teach it to the one of French. 

Hundreds of note books, that for many years have been stored 
away in the modest mansion on Marlboro Street, will soon have their 
embodied results published ; then you will have a better conception of 
this man that in his youth, scarce turned of thirty, solved the geolog- 
ical problems that, w^th meagre results, if any, had engaged the 
thoughts of many men of many lands, and of many travellers that 
had passed over and along the boldly-written story of the earth's 
structure, but had never seen or read it. 

And how delighted were his great classes in the University of 
Virginia with his wonderful interpretations of that story ! His class- 
room was crowded with students, for Jefferson had a rare wa}' of 
treating professors ; his notion was that every man should have all 
he could earn ; and so the man that taught most interestingly had the 
largest classes, and received the largest rewards, for the professor 
received not only compensation from the State but all the fees from 
those attending his lectures. Professor Rogers's class-room was filled 
not only with students but with many gathered from the people, 
who came to hear the wondrous story of science which he imparted 
so clearly that a man who knew not even the alphabet went away 
feeling that he understood the whole subject. 

Time forbids that I should further speak of Professor Rogers. 
Today the United States government is engaged, for the first time, in 
a great geological survey that is to extend over all the States. The 
surveyors are now upon the mountains of Virginia. When they shall 
have measured all over that broad area, and determined its highest 



35 

altitude, but adding nothing of moment to the great sections that 
William B. Rogers made, that highest summit in the grand Appala- 
chian ranges is to be called Mount Rogers. 

The President : This meeting is now adjourned. 

The following letters from two former pupils of Professor 
Rogers were received by Dr. Runkle in reply to a request made by 
him for information upon some points, and this was to have been 
incorporated in his address ; but as the letters were not received in 
season for such use, they have been made, in their original form, part 
of the records of the meeting. The first is from Prof. Wm. LeRoy 
Brown, President of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of 
Alabama ; the second, from Prof. Francis H. Smith, Professor 
Rogers's successor in the Chair of Physics at the University of 
Virginia. 

Agricultural and Mechanical College, 

Auburn, Ala., Oct. 3, 1882. 
Dr. J. D. Runkle : 

My/iearsir, — In reply to your letter asking me to give my 
recollection of the impression made on the Virginia students by Dr. 
W. B. Rogers, when professor at the State University, I beg to state 
that I was a student at the University of Virginia when Dr. Rogers 
was Professor of Natural Philosophy, and had the privilege of attend- 
ing his lectures on physics and astronomy. I remember well the 
very great interest in and enthusiasm for science he excited among 
the students by his brilliant lectures. Often, especially when it was 
announced that he would begin his lectures on astronom.y, have I 
seen his lecture-hall crowded with students from other departments, 
including those of law and medicine ; indeed, so crowded with young 
men, eager to hear the eloquent presentation of the subject by the 
professor whom they so greatly admired, that not even standing- 
room could be found in the hall. All the aisles would be filled, and 
even the windows crowded from the outside with eager listeners. In 
one instance I remember the crowd had assembled long before the 
hour named for the lecture, and so filled the hall that the professor 
could only gain admittance through a side entrance leading from the 
rear of the hall through the apparatus room. These facts show how 
he was regarded by the students of the University of Virginia. 

His manner of presenting the commonest subject in science — 
clothing his thoughts as he always did with a marvelous fiuency and 
clearness of expression, and beauty of diction unsurpassed — caused 
the warmest admiration, and often aroused the excitable nature of 
southern youth to the exhibition of enthusiastic demonstrations of 



36 



approbation. Throughout Virginia, and indeed the entire South, his 
former students are scattered, who even now regard it as one of the 
highest privileges of their lives to have attended his lectures. 

They were ever ready to exhibit towards him while living their 
earnest love and admiration, and, on reading the dispatch announcing 
his death, felt unfeigned sorrow that their great teacher of science 
was no longer numbered among the living. 

Very respectfully, 

Wm. LeRoy Brown. 



Professor Smith writes : — 

Professor William Barton Rogers was, in several respects, the 
most eminent teacher I have ever known. 

In the first place, he had that prime requisite of a good teacher, 
an ample and exact knowledge of the subject taught, extending far 
beyond the amount conveyed to the pupil. The teacher who tells all 
he knows has the secret of tediousness, if the French proverb be true. 
He who knows no more than he has to tell is worse than tedious. 
He can scarcely fail to mislead by over-statement. There is perpetual 
temptation, too, to the pretense of greater information than he really 
has, — a claim which the immature minds bMore him are only too 
ready to concede. But he who brings knowledge out of a full and 
well-ordered store not only presents it in its proper relation to what 
is kept back but is able, by proper qualifications, to give the truth. 
The full and accurate knowledge of which we speak cannot be his 
who is content merely to repeat the statements of others. The real 
teacher must verify and, if possible, extend his knowledge by original 
work. He must be an investigator. There are investigators who are 
no teachers. There is no genuine teacher who is not an investigator. 
The statements of such an one are living truths, which are the more 
significant the better the preparation of the hearer to receive them. 
Such a teacher was Professor Rogers. When he spoke to us of 
geology, for instance, his facts were as fresh as the mountain breezes, 
which had so lately fanned him. His descriptions and illustrations 
had a vivid reality, a felt fidelity to nature, which the memoriter 
recitations of a closet geologist could never have possessed. 

He had, to a remarkable extent, a second indispensable requisite 
of a good teacher, viz., the ability to identify himself with the state 
of mind of the beginner in knowledge, and to accompany him step by 
step through the subject, neither wearying him by needless digres- 
sion, nor outstripping him by taking steps too long for him. When 
Professor Rogers was through with his explanation, the dullest man 
in the class would wear a gratified look of intelligence. His exposi- 
tions were so easy and so satisfactory that not to catch them argued 
not dullness but culpable inattention. I thought that I remarked in 



37 

him on one occasion some natural impatience when a careless hearer 
applied, after the lecture, for a repetition of what he had lost by his 
own fault. Mr. Rogers could be patient with feebleness but not 
with inattention, and rightly so ; for at his magic touch intricate sub- 
jects seemed gradually to assume orderly simplicity, and dark matters 
grew to be bright. I recall the enthusiasm with which Professor 
Courtenay (himself one of the most thorough teachers of his day) 
spoke of Professor Rogers's treatment of the doctrine of central forces 
as a masterpiece of simple yet adequate exposition. 

The value, to a teacher, of this faculty of being able to " begin 
at the beginning " appears more clearly when one thinks of the many 
really able men who do not possess it. Who has not witnessed their 
painful attempts to convey knowledge? They begin with unintelli- 
gible utterances, which seem to cover the subject with gloom. Each 
new sentence sheds additional darkness on what was already dark. 
In the countenances of the hearers perplexity deepens into hopeless 
imbecility, succeeded often by peaceful slumber ; while the unfortu- 
nate speaker, if he be humble, finally retires with a mortified sense of 
failure, or, if he be not, often grows desperate and seeks by raising 
his voice to overcome a difficulty which is really in him and not his 
audience, and which demands not more sound but more sense. 

To this ability to realize the difficulties of the beginner, and to 
remove them. Professor Rogers added, in the third place, a com- 
mand of copious and apt language, — a power of easy and eloquent 
expression as rare as it was delightful. We have all known teachers 
of extensive learning and of adequate power of adapting themselves 
to the capacity of their pupils who were yet ungraceful in utterance 
and unpleasing in style. While the reason of the learner might be 
satisfied under their instruction, his taste was continually offended. 
Somewhat of his attention was perhaps withdrawn from the excellence 
of the logic to the faults of the manner. Let it be observed that to 
secure the highest excellence as a teacher it is not enough merely to 
avoid such faults. They are mainly due to a lack of imagination, 
and imagination may and should be a great help to the teacher. A 
living philosopher has pointed out the importance of the imagination 
to the scientific investigator. Professor Rogers gave a signal proof 
of the value of its right use in the highest style of teaching. To his 
princely imagination was due the aptness of his language, — a single 
happy epithet often illuminating a whole sentence. He had marvel- 
ous skill in the use of adjectives, those dangerous parts of speech 
which are bad masters but excellent servants. He knew how to use 
them as a skillful artist uses his colors, — not to daub his canvas, but 
to make his well-drawn outlines glow with life. He did not disdain 
an occasional rhetorical ornament when the subject naturally fiowered 
into beauty ; but imagination was with him ever the handmaid, not the 
mistress, of reason. He never fell into that semi-poetical bombast 



38 

once known as "American eloquence " ; nor, on the other hand, did 
he discard the right use of the imagination because it is so often 
abused. His example may profitably be studied by American speakers 
and teachers who, in recoiling from a ridiculous extravagance of 
rhetoric, are perhaps in danger of falling into a dry and hard fashion 
of speech, which may escape absurdity but does not escape poverty. 

I am sure injustice is often done to Professor Rogers by his 
admirers. One may hear grey-haired men in the South tell of his 
remarkable eloquence and recite passages from his lectures, heard, it 
may be, thirty or forty years before. They speak of him as an 
accomplished rhetorician. Such praise falls infinitely below his merit. 
In their admiration of some striking sally of the imagination, thrown 
in perhaps in the course of a long lecture, merely to relieve the 
strain on their unflagging attention, they forget the masterly train of 
luminous exposition which preceded and followed it, which seemed so 
easy and yet was so hard to do, as those of them found out who have 
since tried to imitate it. I have listened to some men of equal scien- 
tific acquirements, and to others of equal wealth of fancy, but never 
to one who equalled him in uniting accurate thought to fit expression. 
Whether he appeared on the platform of the British Association or 
upon that of its American namesake, — whether behind the lecturer's 
desk at Boston or Charlottesville, — his preeminence was at once 
obvious and acknowledged. I remember the glowing tribute paid 
him by the late Prof. Bache after hearing him give a lecture in 
Providence twenty-five years ago. He pronounced it the most per- 
fect specimen of scientific analysis he had ever listened to. 

Professor Rogers had another attribute of a great teacher. He 
never disparaged the work of the teacher. He clearly appreciated its 
dignity and difficulty. He never thought that a man could know too 
much or be too great for a teacher. He was well aware that the 
loftiest powers and the greatest learning have found ample scope in 
this honorable and responsible calling. He once told me that he 
never rose to begin a lecture without some feeling of trepidation. He 
respected even his audience of young students. No wonder he did so 
much better than the self-complacent and condescending wise men 
who are often seen in similar places. Finally, Professor Rogers was 
possessed of great patience and good-nature, — qualities indispensable 
to the successful teacher, who has to deal with such variety of char- 
acter and conduct. Bright boys are often wayward, and good boys 
are sometimes stupid. Professor Rogers could be patient with the 
dullness of the one, and gently firm with the folly of the other. I 
knew him for thirty-three years, first as a pupil and then as a friend. 
1 never heard him speak an unkind or uncharitable word. I never 
knew liim to give needless pain to a human creature. This seemed 
to require in him no self-control. It appeared to be the normal 
product of a kind and gentle nature. We fondly dwell upon this 



;i9 



charming trait of character. We turn from his splendid intellect to 
his warm and tender heart. Admiration of his talents melts into love 
for the man, our humble tribute to the great teacher, which began 
with applause, fittingly ends in tears. 

Francis H. Smith. 
University of Virginia, 
Oct. 9, 1882. 



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